i just finished a book of essays called “world of wonders” by aimee nezhukumatathil, where she connects memories of her life with natural elements like obscure creatures or trees or no-so-obscure creatures. her childhood was a quiet one in the 80s, so her experiences she shared were relatable, but from a different lens of a first-generation non-white child. but what this book really shines in is the lyricism of the writing. she’s firstly a poet, is my understanding, and you can tell that by the way she weaves her prose. her writing reminds me of michael perry’s, in its leaving you wanting for a time that’s gone by.
the book is short and a quick read, and several essays are illustrated by the natural world she makes connections with. i have a hard cover copy that i will gladly lend to anyone.
******
speaking of the 80s, i read the book “we ride upon sticks”, which was a recommendation from another blogger, and it was the opposite of the collection of essays, but equally reminiscent of the 80s. the pages were dense, with text crowding the page in a small size and one paragraph taking up a page a times. but after i got into it, i definitely got engrossed with this book. it features a field hockey team in the late 80s in a town outside of salem, and they make a weird pact through emilio estevez and witchcraft, though, actual witchcraft, or just the knowledge that they were in this together? either way, i was constantly reminded of things that happened in the 80s that i had decided didn’t need to take up space in my brain anymore. specifically, gitano jeans, which produced such a rush of nostalgia, i couldn’t help but gasp when i read it in the book.
this book is not necessarily short, and not a quick read. there are no illustrations, but i think if you want a rush of 80s nostalgia and a plotline that is nothing like anything i’ve ever seen before, then pick up this book. i think the last page and a half are worth the entire read, and i was smiling hard as i finished it up.
in which i lay out my insecurities as a 13-year-old in a too-small uniform
i feel like it’s easy to find athletic clothes for most sizes these days. in fact, i feel like it’s easier to find clothes in general if you’re bigger than a size 10. when i was searching for a prom dress in 1996, the pickings were slim for a teenage size 14 (probably a size 12ish these days). my mom and i went to st. cloud to check out what the mall had, since willmar was a non-spot for anything prom dress related. we searched every store, and i think i was almost ready to go with some weird split pants thing from penney’s before we found a forest green size 14 dress that fit like a very tight glove, probably in the back corner of deb or something, tucked away where no one would find it. i sat and danced very carefully that night.
i feel like clothing has gotten easier to find for bigger people. when i was wearing a size 20, i hated that every shirt fit like a muumuu, but eventually the retailers caught up, and now days, you can (mostly) find the clothes you want in the size you need.
but that’s not what this post is about. let’s go back to being a 13/14 year old in the early 90s. oh man, those years were tough, and your peers were even tougher. i was probably the biggest girl in your class (not just clothes wise, at a not-so-bad-in-hindsight size 12/14, but also 2nd tallest – mackenzie was 6′ at that point, i was probably close to 5’7″ or 8″, near my current height). ugh, teenage girls have it rough. and i decided to have a hand at being on the volleyball team during 8th grade, something that all my classmates had been a part of the previous year. i didn’t want to miss out this time around.
so we practiced, learned the basics, figured it out. and we were ready for our first game. the day before, we got our shamrocks uniforms (go big green!), and i managed to get the biggest size available, which was probably equivalent to a size 10 these days. it was probably a child’s size large. who knows what it was. i looked at the shorts and knew my ample behind (which i’m currently at relative peace with) would NOT fit in those shorts. i was on the verge of tears and stuffed it in my bag in the locker room, then tried not to cry on the way home.
i was NOT wearing that uniform to the game.
(currently, i would refuse point blank. if my teammates or coach wanted to know why, i would put on said uniform, parade around in it, then peel it off hoping that the fabric would rip. or i would wear it and say screw you world – you made the uniform small; you gotta watch stuff jiggle. but i was 13. give me a break.)
now. time to give my mom MAD PROPS. i got home and was filled with DREAD. how was i going to manage this. i don’t remember the specifics, but i do know at one point that my mom asked me to put on the uniform so she could see what was up. i don’t know what she remembers, but i remember feeling like a completely humiliated stuffed sausage in that setup.
(you have to remember – we were not as body positive then as we are now. the early 90s was a time of baggy acid wash jeans, loose silk boat-collared shirts, oversized colorful polos, and we still had big hair. we did not want to be a stuffed sausage.)
i’m pretty sure she called mr. byron, coach of the 8th grade shamrock team and father of my classmate beth, and pled my case. somehow, and i’m not sure how, the shamrocks scraped together the money for new uniforms for the 8th grade team, and the current sausagey uniforms went to the 7th graders. i know i wasn’t the only one who benefitted from this. i may have been the biggest one size wise, but there were a couple other girls in my class who were also not that much smaller than i was. i think there was a collective sigh of relief among everyone who weighed more than 130 lbs.
unfortunately, we did have one game before the new uniforms were in. i was allowed to wear a long sleeved white shirt and a pair of blue shorts i owned (not quite green but the closest i had). we taped my number to the back of the shirt. while i was in the locker room, a couple of my classmates tried to heckle me into “just wear the uniform for this one game” but no way was i budging. they were comfortably lounging in their uniforms, while mine would have lodged itself uncomfortably in many places.
thankfully, no one cared after i served to some girl on the other team who couldn’t return it to save herself. i think i scored 6 points in a row.
go big green!
PS: i quit volleyball after that, which is probably a good thing because they went to basically full coverage spandex underwear for the lower half the uniform for the rest of the 90s, and that would have been the end of my teenaged self. uniforms these days aren’t horrible, but still not enough for 12-year-old me to say “sign me up.” 40-year-old me would say “bring it on.”
i grew up in a family needing to be frugal, with a propensity for instant gratification (last name starts with W – go check out the research on this). so my entire life consists of internal conflicts about things that i WANT vs. spending the money for these items. i have a winter parka that’s in its 9th winter and going strong. i also buy $150 running shoes twice a year. my jewelry is nothing extravagant or expensive. my camera gear is top notch. i have trouble justifying spending more than $20 on a pair of jeans, or any piece of clothing really, but i will gladly part with $75 for a nice meal with nate.
the mental gymnastics are really something else.
so, when i am in search of specific running gear, price is generally a mental hurdle i have to overcome.
especially when i find shorts with a long inseam in colors other than black (a rare find).
enter oiselle, a woman-owned company that makes clothing designed by women for women. i was intrigued if their shorts would be a utilitarian addition to my relatively cheap run wardrobe.
oh, and they have 6″ inseam running shorts that come in one of my favorite colors (evidenced by the matching phone case). (also, sorry for the bathroom pic – it’s the only place in my house with a full-length mirror.)
the bad news about these shorts? $62. yep, you heard that right. luckily, i had a coupon, but STILL. $62 for a pair of shorts??
besides the length and the color, these shorts have a couple other significant advantages:
1- CHECK OUT THIS POCKET.
not only is a SIDE pocket on a pair of women’s shorts with a ZIPPER, but check out the REAL ESTATE.
this pocket has more space than most of my pants pockets. my entire phone can fit in it and zip up!
2- the material is really nice. it’s soft and sort of flowy. while i was running, i kept waiting for the inside to ride up, as i expect with any sort of shorts, but they didn’t. i even spent some time deliberately trying to get them to ride up, and it just didn’t happen.
3- they are not high rise. holy cats, i hate trying to find shorts these days because everything is high rise. these are mid-rise; they sit below my belly button and stay there
4- have i mention that they’re orange?? usually the only fun colored short have a 2″ inseam, so this is amazing.
5- there were some arm warmers on clearance that i got at the same time (arm warmers are nice when it’s transition weather and you want to wear a tshirt or tank top but will have chilly arms for a bit). these were a more reasonable price and i didn’t feel bad spending the money on these.
check out the little birds on the warmers! they’re reflective! and they match the shorts! and those thumbholes! i do love me some thumbholes on running stuff.
oiselle sells more than just shorts – they’ve got sweatshirts, winter wear, wool shirts, tights, underwear, tanks, tshirts, sleepwear, etc. plus clearance stuff and a lot items that cheaper than $62 run shorts.
a sunday update list, because who’s got time to read an essay on the insurrection, right? (or write one, ugh.)
i was doing yoga last night, and i caught my little toe on my mat as i was dragging my leg forward during an especially quick practice. i’ve caught the edge of my foot and toes on my mat before, and since i’ve gotten my new mat, which is especially sticky, it’s a real injury hazard. so i think i need to refrain from doing the super quick yoga, because that seems to be the time when i don’t pick my feet/legs up enough. but my toe hurts this morning, which means i did something really bad to it. i guess i’m not running today đ
speaking of running, i bought a super expensive pair of running shorts yesterday. i still can’t believe i spent the amount of money i did on it, but they’ve got a long inseam, and they’re orange, and they’re supposedly really good. they’d better be miraculous, and i’ll do a review on them. liz said that at least people will be able see me.
speaking of seeing, i bought myself a pair of reading glasses, which SUCK. my eyes aren’t that bad yet, apparently, but i thought i was getting there. my right eye is worse for up close seeing, and my left is worse for distance seeing, which i think is kind of weird. but yeah, i put those readers on and that does not work.
speaking of reading, i’m reading american dirt, which got a lot of mixed reviews last january. it was a big brouhaha because the author, while she does have some puerto rican descent and is married to an undocumented immigrant, got a lot of flack about writing about the mexican migrant experience when there are many mexican authors more qualified to do so. so i avoided it when it came out, but then it got book of the year on goodreads, so has she been redeemed? i don’t know where we’re at with the drama, but i grabbed it from the library and am devouring it. sometimes you’ve just got to see what’s up from all angles and form your own opinions from actually experiencing something.
speaking of “opinions,” since DT was banned from twitter, posts including disinformation went down 73%. !!!! i don’t want this to turn into an essay on insurrection, but let’s just say that i hope the arrests that have happened since jan. 6 have made some of the jan. 20 plans go in the toilet. i have no idea what’s going to happen that day, and i’m kind of scared to see what happens. but i’m looking forward to some leaders who, at the very least, i know will lie a lot less. also, if you think for some reason that it was “anti-fa(scists)” behind jan. 6, know how i know that’s not true? anti-fa would all be wearing masks and sure as heck not take selfies and videos of themselves storming the capitol. what a bunch of idiots qanon are. EDIT: here’s a good podcast on how Qanon started. really interesting – linky linky.
speaking of january, i’m already accomplishing something on my resolutions list and attending an MLK thing on monday. when an email went out at work about it, i was like, a holiday seminar? like, i can sleep in and just do nothing on monday. but then i remembered my resolutions, and i remembered all the BLM protests, and i remembered that i’ve got it pretty good, so i signed up. it’s always good to learn how to be a better person.
speaking of trying to be a better person, i think i’ll try to do yoga tonight, but happily, it’s a slow, stretchy flow on the docket. it’ll be good for relaxing and reflection. and definitely not any stress on the toe.
sometimes it’s nice to walk outside at night during the winter, if it’s not too cold and windless. the snow crunches, but not quite crunches more like creaks and squelches and packs all at once, under your shoes, in the crisp night that’s heavily silent otherwise. no evening insect chirps, bird song, plant rustling that you don’t notice until it’s gone. the darkness falls early, and if the moon is on the other side of the earth, the stars are scintillating pricks in the cold night sky, their brightness seemingly bigger and whiter than in the summertime. your eyes slide across the constellations, picking up the sharpness of the stars until you focus directly on them, at which point they get fuzzy, their edges elusive. and the air wicks away your breath and your warmth, so you head back to the warmth you know exists indoors.
sometimes it’s nice to notice the silence and absence and darkness and bigness while knowing that it will be replaced soon by a season that also seems elusive. for the moment.
over the new year’s weekend i decided to watch 12 star trek movies, hoo boy! i skipped the first one and started with the wrath of kahn, then went all the way through star trek beyond.
i realized that picard may be the more diplomatic captain, but kirk as captain makes for a more adventurous and better movies.
i also like how the messaging in the movies is still so current, especially movie 6, where things are changing and people are scared.
âIs it possible that we two, you and I, have grown so old and so inflexible that we have outlived our usefulness?”
“Some people think the future means the end of history. Well, we haven’t run out of history quite yet. Your father called the future ‘the undiscovered country.’ People can be very frightened of change.”
“If there is to be a brave new world, our generation is going to have the hardest time living in it.â
(movie 6, “the undiscovered country,” is my favorite.)
and since i like lists, here is a list of the 12 movies, ranked! (to note: i liked them all. but some more than others!)
12. ST: 5 – the final frontier. this one is weird, with a non-vulcan vulcan and a weird non-god search for god, but i do enjoy the humor at the beginning. “it’s a blizzard! whoosh whoosh.” “my sensors show sunny and 70Âș…”
11. ST: Insurrection. this one is the second of the full next generation/picard group, and it really just seems like an extra long episode more than a movie. it’s about a group of people who relocated to a planet with regenerating capabilities (extra long life), and a group wants to destroy the planet to harness it.
10. ST: Beyond. while the graphics are super awesome on this one, and i love the character of jaylah, i just couldn’t get behind the story as much as other movies. i do like the line where spock called the beastie boys classical music. and how much screentime scotty got! i have to admit, they really beefed up the “supporting” main characters in the reboot.
9. ST: Nemesis. the final show for the TNG crew, and it featured a cloned picard (tom hardy with a nose prosthesis). the interesting thing is watching all these movies and seeing how the romulans and klingons interacted, along with different time traveling ships, and how the rebooted timeline uses references to those.
8. ST: generations. i really liked the interaction between the captains in this one, and how they worked together! of course it sort of threw off the whole notion of kirk knowing he’d die alone, but when you morph from one crew to the next, it’s always a little weird. it was also interesting to note when some of the original crew’s movies were running, the TNG tv show was airing. also, we get this gem.
7: Star Trek. the reboot! a new timeline! a new crew finally coalesces! spock prime! vulcan’s destroyed! karl urban knocks it out of the park! we finally see how kirk overcame the kobiyashi maru! the timeline is canon? also, how fortuitous that kirk just happened to find the cave where spock prime is hiding out.
6. ST: voyage home. this one was just fun, having the crew time travel back to present time (1980s) to get a humpback whale to save starfleet from a probe. it’s nice to throw some levity in there after the wrath of khan and the search for spock. that was a lot of heavy stuff, so it was time to lighten it up!
5. ST: search for spock. after spock’s untimely demise in khan, bones starts acting a little funny. then we learn that there is an old, long-ago-tried method of putting the mind back in the body. so while bones is hosting spock’s head, we hear from sarek (spock’s father) that they need the body – which happens to be MISSING FROM HISÂ TUBE that was shot onto the genesis planet. bum bum buummmmmm…. to top it all off, the enterprise is compromised!
4. ST: into darkness. i feel like this was the kelvin timeline movie that was enough of a throwback while also going over the top with the campy factor, which turned out to be the best kelvin film. that’s what i like about the original movies and the kelvin timeline movies – it’s cheesy action!
3. ST: first contact. the best TNG movie. there’s action, it throws back to picard’s borg days (a harrowing end-of-season cliffhanger!!), and the crew has to save the universe from the borg while ALSO preserving the history of first contact due to warp drive. this one is all action! like i said, i like some camp/cheese in my star trek movies, but first contact is a nice deviation from that among the top movies.
2. ST: the wrath of khan. the start of the trilogy within the series! we learn about the genesis project, and THEN the END trips off the next three movies.
1 ST: the undiscovered country. this movie has everything. a peace mission gone wrong, a klingon trial (complete with worf cameo!!), a mystery on board the enterprise, a mole, a shape-shifting rat, a prison sentence on a frozen planet, a forceful mindmeld, a klingon cloaked ship that can FIRE TORPEDOES WHILE CLOAKED, the crew saves the day, and best of all, an etymology lesson on the word sabotage! there is, as noted in the quotes above, a lot of talk about how change is hard and will meet resistance. a note on the new crew taking over? a nice lesson in how to be better people? i know it can relate to current times! anyway, i love this one.
“there is an old vulcan proverb: only nixon could go to china.”
so, what can we learn from star trek?
if someone tells you they’re from the future, at least check it out
be open to other cultures
never trust anyone who claims to be able to get you out of rura penthe
every year i do the goodreads challenge, where you set a reading goal for yourself. you’d think that with a pandemic and all, it’d be easy to knock out a boatload of books this year, but i didn’t even make my challenge number, which was weeny since i set it before the pandemic (if pandemic had set in when i made my challenge, i might’ve failed hugely).
i set a goal of 55 books for the year and managed to get through 51 (a couple were rereads). but before i get all bent out of shape, i like to note that i’m a believer in the page count rather than book count. i read a lot of long books. sure, there are usually a couple shorties, but geez, a stephen king book is almost always more than 600 pages. so let’s take a look at that data first!
i really knocked it out of the park in 2016. i chalk it up to listening to audiobooks on my drives from southern mn to central mn during the four months of turbulence. oh, i also read a lot of stephen king that year.
so, what were my top books of 2020?
i have two favorites i read this year.
where the crawdads sing by delia owens was my number one book this year. i inhaled this book. it was a mystery, an ode to the natural world, and just lovely. there are some dark sections (i’m ok with that). and one section that was so patronizing to couples who don’t have children (not really ok with that). i hesitated reading this because for some reason i’m a book snob (smut for one) and this book seemed to be super hyped up and put on every book club list. but there was a reason!
the wanderers by chuck wendig was my number two book this year. totally different from crawdads, this is about preserving the human race from its annihilation in the event of a pandemic (wow, how apropos. i read this in early february!). don’t worry – this is different from “the stand”, which i also read again this year. why not read about pandemics that are SO MUCH worse when you’re amidst one? anyway, if you like some action/post-apocalyptic novel action, this book is wort the 782 (!) pages. (much shorter than the stand.)
those are my favorites this year. here’s the runners-up list.
big summer by jennifer weiner. a nice beach thriller mystery read! i love her books and have read them all.
book of two ways by jodi piccoult. see above about jennifer weiner – i have read all her books! this was a good book with lots of information about egyptian mythology with a weird twisty middle that made me laugh at her genius.
the dead zone by stephen king. this book has entered my top five SK books! i thought it was great. it’s about a guy who gets a TBI and can see a person’s future just by touching them.
leave it as it is by david gessner. gessner intertwines some biographical info about teddy roosevelt’s mission to create and bolster the national park system and his conservationist (almost) ways with his trip across the west in TR’s footsteps to several national parks. he also focuses on bears ears national park and really focuses on american indian perspective.
the midnight library by matt haig. while this started off a little depressing, it turned into a lovely book of redemption with a really interesting premise of experiencing other lives you could have had.
the four agreements by miguel ruiz. i picked this up because lesley fightmaster quoted đ a lot from it. it’s short and small and gives guidance on how to live an authentic life. i underlined a lot in it, and i’m sure i’ll pick it up again and again.
books i expected a lot from that didn’t live up to the hype? (hmm… see i’ve just got to read hype-y books, i think.)
the starless sea
the ballad of songbirds and snakes (trying to give a more human background to cornelius snow just makes me hate him more)
the bookish life of nina hill
i think if i want to read more books in 2021, i just need to start reading more fiction. i like to learn things, but nothing really prompts me to pick up a book like the storyline of a good piece of fiction. we’ll see how that pans out.
books i want to read in 2021?
american dirt (this got a lot of good press then a lot of bad press, and now i think we’re back to good press. i’m going to borrow it from the library so i don’t give money to the author if it is back in bad press territory.)
a promised land by barack obama. memoirs are as insatiable to me as fiction.
we ride upon sticks – this is on my list because of a rave review of a blogger i’ve followed for 15 years.
this books is anti-racist. i know this is not fiction and will probably make me learn, but it goes hand in hand with my “resolution” to do more antri-racist things
in the same vein of nonfiction, i want to read something by wallace stegner.
is this the year i reread harry potter?
and when is the year i read all of stephen king in a row? (that is a huge commitment.)
even if the first half of 2021 is going to be rough, we know we’re going to climb out of the pandemic hell that was 2020 eventually, right?
i’m going to change up my “resolutions” a bit. if there were ever a year to make a change, i think 2021 is it.
however, my first item has been photo related for all the time i’ve been making this list, and i think it should remain photo related. let’s take more pics. but what of…
social justice, historically, has been wrought by middle aged white women. guess what. i’m a middle aged white woman. i’m going to figure out what i’m going to do this year to help the anti-racist movement. i don’t know what that is, yet. maybe my camera will be involved. maybe it’s just sharing news items like this one that the boogaloo bois, a far-right militia group, were charged with the attack on the minneapolis precinct during the george floyd protests. (some of my readers should know this. i would guess most haven’t heard this news.) sharing non-propagandaed news is one step. confronting racism with those you know is another step. but what else? i’m not sure yet.
this will, of course, make me angry. so therefore, i definitely will continue yoga every day. i did yoga every day in 2019, and in 2020, i did yoga most days (maybe every 10th day i took a day off). although she’s gone physically, fightmaster yoga lives on through her youtube channel, and i will tell everyone i know to keep doing her yoga. it will help you out physically, mentally, and maybe spiritually if that’s the route you want to take yoga. the light in me recognizes and honors the light in you! let your little light shine.
i will keep travel on my list, because i’m already planning a trip to new england in may, and i would like to get out to the black hills in the fall if the virus has calmed down. i would also guess that if there are protests or sit-ins or other items that need documenting, that would involve traveling. my mom also wants to see the milky way this summer, and that means another trip to the north shore! i’m not going to be mad about that. especially the rustic inn where i can get a slice of pie.
RUN A RACE. i don’t care what the length is! i don’t care if we start in waves. i don’t care if it’s ragnar trail and it’s -30Âș and glare ice the entire trail. i don’t care if i have to roll out of bed at 4 a.m. so i can be ready to run at 5 a.m. – I AM RUNNING A RACE WITH OTHER PEOPLE THIS YEAR.
convince nate to get a new job. i swear, 99% of his problems would be solved if he would get a job that’s got normal hours. and if 99% of his problems are solved, then i’d venture to say 49.5% of mine are. the other 1% of his problems would be solved if he weren’t allergic to cats. that said, i don’t know if this resolution is doable. i’ll put it down. but don’t be surprised if this has no results.
welp, some excellent news we learned this year is that recycling plastic was just a big marketing campaign and doesn’t really help. so that’s just great. we still need to help out the earth. we’ve seen what happens when we pause our polluting ways. and like iâve said before, is it wrong to want a clean earth, even if it DOESNâT stop climate change? how do we stop this plastic inundation? maybe i will start writing campaigns. use my twitter account and all 87 followers to campaign for less plastic in consumables. i have no plan for this, but the farther down the path of climate change we get, the harder it’s going to be to turn around. i’m no global leader, and i’m not a CEO of a giant corporation. i just want this on my list because it’s going to be a top-of-mind item for me this year, and i’ll figure out what to do. (i never said this was a definitive list of 100% goals… they’re more like guidelines.)
can we be happy, collectively, as a people? i think once the maniac is out of the white house, that will help us breathe a sigh of relief. once the vaccine is more widely accessible, that will help. collectively, i think we’ll be happy again. but i have no doubt i will be able to be happy in 2021 amidst my crusades, because while i am definitely a cynic, i’m optimistic. smiling at little things helps: a smooth lake, a well-crafted sentence, the smell of fall, my stupid cats snoozing in one giant fuzzpuddle, tulips pushing through the dirt, the silence of a snowfall, fireworks, laughing with others.
so i didn’t change much when it came to the basics of my guidelines. change is good, but you always know who you are at your core. some things never change, but being open to adjustments is key. and who knows? minute adjustments over time eventually move mountains.
so it’s time for my year in review, which is actually really fun to do most years, but this year is doubly fun because WOW 2020.
first, let’s take a peek at what i wanted to see happen in 2020:
so first on my list for years and years is take more photos. maybe instead of that as a goal, the goal should be to do something with the pics i take. like last year, an unexpected thing that happened was taking some wedding pics, but i donât want to do that every year, yeesh. hmm. might have to think about this one.
sit on my new couch. iâm sitting on it now. itâs glorious. this one will be easy.
continue yoga every day. of all the things that i did in 2019, i think yoga every day was the best thing. iâve got arm muscles, i look forward to spending at least 10 minutes on the mat, and itâs a great way to slow down, if even for 10 minutes. i highly recommend fightmaster yoga. lucky for you, she does a 30-day program at the first of the year every year, and this one is hatha yoga. check it out.
running goals? hmmm. earth day half is already registered for. i have a feeling weâre going to do ragnar again. and liz and i are already planning a DESTINATION RACE. destination races intrigue me to no end, so i finally sat down and looked at what destinations i would want to race at (no ultras or mountains for me, thanks). we settled on big sur in monterrey california (well, i settled on that â liz seemed to agree). the 2020 race was sold out by the time we checked it out, but weâre going to watch for registration for the 2021 11-miler, which should open in october. also, a sub-11-minute-mile 5k would be nice to hit this summer.
do something interesting with nate! i actually like this one because something interesting with nate could be just a quick trip to the cities or it could be an excursion to who knows where. any time i get him out of the house means an interesting time with nate hahaha
help out the earth. or rather, help out us humans who are seemingly hell bent on destructing our time on earth. like iâve said before, is it wrong to want a clean earth, even if it DOESNâT stop climate change? seriously. so my goal this year is to really, diligently try to reduce my plastic use. that includes plastic bottles that are recyclable (plastic is a degradable recyclable, meaning it recycles into a lesser form of plastic, unlike glass or aluminum). (unfortunately, nate buys tons of drinks in plastic bottles; i donât know if i should even try to get him to reduce his usage.) if i fail at reducing plastic, i will also try to reduce the amount of new items i buy (try to fix or buy used).
perhaps in conjunction with #7, i will add on âwrite moreâ in #8. one of the things that helped me really get on the devils syrup bandwagon was to do research on it. if i research stuff about plastic use and a bunch of other keep a clean earth stuff, it would probably push me to do something about it. and while the whole âblog every dayâ resolution is nice, it just never works out like that. so i think just write is a better thing.
be happy! i felt good about 40, and life is doing ok. letâs continue that trend!
well, it’s hard to realize your goals when there’s a global pandemic, a civil rights and justice resurgence, and a contentious, anxiety-inducing election. but rather than dive into those items, let’s review:
take more photos and do something with them. well….. this sort of happened? i definitely did not take more photos than the year i hit all the state parks. i did rent a macro lens, which was glorious, and i took an awesome few pics up in the dark skies of northern mn and got the full milky way. i sold a few canvasses of said milky way pics. i didn’t do any wedding pics because there weren’t supposed to be any big gatherings this year, but that’s ok. so we’ll give this one a point. why not.
i did, indeed, sit on my new couch. i am sitting on it now. point. on a related note, i am actually getting a replacement couch due to the fact that the fabric has a weird line going through it on the back. but, i am sitting on it. i like it.
yoga every day. i didn’t do yoga every day, but i did do yoga quite a bit. i would say 9/10 days, i did yoga. i even bought myself a nice, cushy, expensive yoga mat. there was some sad news on my yoga mat though. my yoga teacher, lesley fightmaster, died unexpectedly about a month ago. i never met her in person, but i did see her almost every day, and it’s still a shock. her yoga teachings live on, though.
travel? ha! LOL. 2020, wow. so the week before i was supposed to go to florida for my conference, the pandemic basically hit the US. i had plane tickets, hotel reservations, tickets for universal studios purchased, jane was set to come with, etc. etc. and then covid. #thankscovid #thankskim so there was no florida, no black hills. i did go to the boundary waters in august, which was super fun! went to the fake derry reunion at leech lake, and then camped at the state park in southeastern MN. other than that, there was no traveling to be had, other than visiting my parents a couple times. i haven’t even been out of state this year. #thanks2020
running goals were SQUASHED. SQUASHED. #thanks2020. i was signed up for the earth day half, and it was canceled. signed up for ragnar trail, and it was canceled. planned on signing up for big sur 2021 with liz, and that was already canceled back in may. i ran NO organized races this year, which is a bummer. sure, i RAN. that was no problem. but a race is something different; the energy of other people around just makes it an exciting run. so no point on this one. not for lack of trying.
the most interesting thing i did with nate this year was make him come to charlie’s 5-yr cheatin’ the reaper celebration. we stayed overnight in rochester and then headed to my parents’ house the next day. it wasn’t a fantastic adventure, but it was something different! i’ll take the point for this one.
if there was one good thing that came from a lockdown from the pandemic, it was to show people how the earth recovers from people. that was good news for the environment. on a personal front, because pandemic, i did not focus on my plastic use more than usual, which is something i still need to do. however, i drove less, contributing less CO2 to the air. instead of disposable masks, i use cloth ones. i baked a crapton of bread, reducing the plastic breadbags that i purchased (flour comes in recylable/compostable paper bags). so many weird byproducts of a pandemic.
i did not write more. i did not read more. you’d think with staying home and loafing around, i’d’ve found the time for that, but nope. i did do some research into environmental stuffs, but it was pretty minimal. i didn’t even manage to finish kablpomo, which was the first time i’d ever not finished it. sad. no point for me on this.
this was a tough year to be happy. there was a pandemic. there was a contentious election and elected officials who don’t want to do their jobs (mcconnell…). there were fires in australia and the US and there were protests against unnecessary killings and protests against wearing masks for the public good and protests against protests, and people who you thought you knew saying hateful things against groups of people who deserve no such hate, and hypocrisy of “just comply” except when it’s inconvenient for you and the bar you like to frequent, and people who lost their jobs, and people whose jobs didn’t pay enough for their essentialness, and people juggling a job and teaching their kids, and people losing their homes, and WWIII almost happening – twice, and people making insane amounts of money while others were making none, and through all this a virus spreading and people dying in hospitals alone and people on ventilators and people with long-lasting odd symptoms of a virus, and video chats/meetings cannot replace face-to-face interaction because we are a social species, and a year that just wouldn’t quit.happiness was hard to find in 2020.but there were some good things: dolly parton donated $1million to find a covid vaccine. clinics have finally embraced the video appointment. people spent a lot of time outdoors in the trees. we baked a boatload of sourdough bread. i got an awesome tattoo. we decided to not glorify parts of history that oppressed swathes of the populace (and instead put it in a museum, as is appropriate). as noted above, the earth showed what could happen if we pulled back on pollutant output. we found ways to celebrate. cities closed streets for people to dine outdoors. india planted 250 million trees. the internet didn’t crash on us when we needed it the most. a lot of us realized that we have a lot of work to do yet on racism. i painted my kitchen cabinets with help from liz. as a country, we managed to not run out of toilet paper. and i quit facebook.
there it is, year in review 2020. it has been, simultaneously, the longest and shortest year ever. not the worst year personally, but probably the worst collectively during my rememberable lifetime. the apocalypse came, and people couldn’t even be bothered to wear a mask. 2021 resolutions to come.
what the heck IS a calling bird? aren’t all birds calling birds?
time for an etymology lesson!
turns out, the calling bird line in the 12 days of christmas song is a relatively new revelation. the line for 100+ years prior to its adoption was four COLLY birds.
the song was first published around 1780, which means it was probably a spoken poem or song long before that. and the first publications called the day four birds, colly/collie birds.
forget a calling bird – what the heck is a COLLY bird???
colly comes from old english for the cord coal – describing coal dust, the color of coal, etc. and in a 1565 translation of metamorphosis, here’s the line that described a raven:
as thou thou prating raven white by nature being bred, hadst on they fether justly late a coly colour spred.
but, where the four birds supposed to be ravens? more likely the colly bird in the song is supposed to be a blackbird.
BUT! the mystery doesn’t stop there. in the past, the line has also been four canary birds, four colored birds, and four curley birds. it’s even been a tole of birds?
good news bad news, though: in 1909, a tune was set in publication to the poem or song, and the calling birds were put in print. however, it took a while for it to catch on. it wasn’t until the mid 1900s that calling became the preferred word, and in the 1970s, it was the much more common word.
unfortunately, the calling bird is much more ambiguous than the colly bird! even the american ornithological society thinks it should be a colly bird. so let’s chalk this confusion up to frederic austin, whose musical arrangement we all now know, to not transcribing the song correctly.
speaking of the 80s, i read the book “we ride upon sticks”, which was a recommendation from another blogger, and it was the opposite of the collection of essays, but equally reminiscent of the 80s. the pages were dense, with text crowding the page in a small size and one paragraph taking up a page a times. but after i got into it, i definitely got engrossed with this book. it features a field hockey team in the late 80s in a town outside of salem, and they make a weird pact through emilio estevez and witchcraft, though, actual witchcraft, or just the knowledge that they were in this together? either way, i was constantly reminded of things that happened in the 80s that i had decided didn’t need to take up space in my brain anymore. specifically, gitano jeans, which produced such a rush of nostalgia, i couldn’t help but gasp when i read it in the book.
